The Immigrant (2013)

When I read the summary for this film, I just expected a sweeping, soaring melodrama. Oh, it's a melodrama, no doubt about it, but surprisingly, it's a pretty restrained effort. I appreciate the fact that it really wasn't overblown in its intentions, in its music, in its acting. The three main actors are all pretty good, Cotillard especially. By now, we know the talent this woman possesses and she's someone that can say so much with just a single facial expression. This is one of her very best performances, and it should, in no way, be discounted. I hope she finally gets that long-due second Oscar nomination. All in all, recommended.

Fmovies: "The Immigrant", James Gray's newest film, while retaining some of the gritty dark-crime dramatics of his previous work, feels like a radical departure. Mainly because its an Ellis Island-era period movie set 100 years ago, and because its observed through the eyes of a female protagonist and her struggle against permanent blight and the inherent depression of the situational times.

Fleeing the brutalities of Trotsky's Red Army, Polish Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and her sickly sister arrive in New York cira 1920. When her sister is quarantined and both are threatened with deportation, Ewa is taken notice and saved by the faux-sensitive brothell pimp Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) and blackmailed into prostitution. Just when Ewa may succumb to the sort of drab, bleak life that she was trying to allude, Bruno's cousin Orlando the Magician (Jeremy Renner) shows up and both men via their own quirky methods try to light a fire in the heart of the pretty foreigner.

In her best part since "Rust and Bone", Cotillard is Oscar worthy in a showy albeit poetic performance (made all the more impressive that she speaks Polish throughout most of it). Phoenix is superb as usual, as the repressed and impotent man who wants to think he's in charge. But Renner steals the show. Right when you think the movie is going to slide under the weight of the misery of its subject, his Orlando appears like a glowing gaslight of fun amongst the dim rooms and crowded corridors. Like his work in "American Hustle", its criminal that his spritely performance here will go unrewarded and under the radar.

Although the universal tale of Gray's film isn't exactly something we haven't seen before (from Kazan's bold "America, America" to Ron Howard's putrid "Far and Away") "The Immigrant" presents a rare and thoughtful experience, one in which we can learn something about the lives of long ago as well as our own.

I just finished this movie and wanted to leave a review, while the credits are still rolling.

I'm one of the harsher critics on IMDb, but I enjoyed The Immigrant. This is a dark film about Prohibition-era New York, and the trials of Eastern European immigrants who have come here in the hopes of a better life.

Like most good films, good and evil are blurred. We aren't asked to judge the characters, but rather to observe them as they are.

The plot is solid and the performances are impressive, particularly Marion Cotillard and Juaquin Phoenix.

The Immigrant fmovies. The Immigrant tells us a devastating story, which simultaneously denounces the fallacy of "American dream" and confirms the indomitable spirit of the immigrants who forged the cultural and economical basis of that country. The performances are excellent, the characters are complex, and the cinematography captures the reality of the historical period with a raw beauty. However, I didn't like this film very much, mainly because it didn't make me feel anything, despite all the drama and personal tragedy it displays. The unfortunate experiences the main character lives are mortifying, and unfortunately, they might have been very common in the time in which this movie is set (also nowadays, thinking it well); but for some reason, The Immigrant isn't made with enough passion for us to plunge into the main character's experiences, and it doesn't have a concrete point besides of being a sample book of human suffering which should have been touching, but it isn't. Having said that, I think my opinion about The Immigrant is in the minority, considering all the acclamation this film has received around the world. However, this doesn't mean I couldn't find positive elements in this film, such as the brilliant performances. Marion Cotillard perfectly transmits vulnerability and resistance at the same time. The great Joaquin Phoenix brings a predictably amazing work as the opportunist Bruno, and Jeremy Renner brings a warm and sensitive attitude which totally adjusts to his character. I think that those three performances are enough reason to make The Immigrant worthy of a slight recommendation, with the hope that other spectators will appreciate the emotions and narrative honesty I wasn't able to find.

Magnificent performance by the leading actors, and even supporting roles. Incredible set, photography, costumes, script, direction, you name it. A true chef d'oeuvre and a feast for the senses. Cotillard is out of this world in almost every scene she appears in, I would not be surprised at all if she sealed an Oscar next year, or at least a nomination. Phoenix had an outstanding performance in this emotionally charged brilliantly written and directed movie about the very depths of human nature, lust, love, greed, survival, good and evil. Renner was great too, within the frame of his role, with some unexpected events as the story unfolds. This is not a movie where you can predict exactly what will happen next, you just sit back and live this amazing movie experience and thank God such great pictures are still made. A couple of hours of my life very well spent.

James Gray's latest tale of melancholic woe and spirits in emotional turmoil takes us back to when America was the land of opportunity for the tired, poor, huddled masses. The director's fifth feature is once again centered in New York, where past entries like "Little Odessa" and "Two Lovers" took place, but "The Immigrant" takes us back ninety years, putting a classical spin on his typical tale.

Though it's lensed with a soft focus emphasis that lends the film a dreamlike patina, "The Immigrant" doesn't shy away from scratching below the scabbed surface of the American dream, even in the first scene. The Cybalska sisters, Ewa and Magda, are among the many crowded in line at Ellis Island in 1921, waiting to be welcomed into America (through the rigorous immigration process that shows that getting into the States was just as difficult then as it is now). The elder Ewa (Marion Cotillard, whose haunting beauty and old-school look made her the perfect casting) is a former Polish nurse who tries to advise her sickly younger sister to look well, but unfortunately, Magda is consumptive and kept in isolation from the other immigrants. Ewa herself is corralled when she is suspected of being "a woman of low morals," but before she can be deported, she is "rescued" by a man named Bruno Weiss (Joaquin Phoenix, also perfectly era-appropriate), who trawls the immigration station in hopes of picking up potential new additions to his troupe.

For you see, Weiss runs a burlesque show made almost entirely of young foreign ladies who escaped the ravages of the Great War to seek their fortunes here. But he takes a special kindle to Ewa, who nevertheless finds herself disliking her new livelihood and employer. Despite his rather sad-sack pursuit of Ewa's affections, Bruno still pimps her out to rich patrons. It may seem very von Trier-esque, but indeed this was not uncommon in the Big Apple back then. Yet Ewa refuses to be downtrodden, even though she has convinced herself that she is a condemned woman (referenced in a crucial scene in a Catholic confessional). She even flees from Bruno's employ at one point, only to end up back where she started in Ellis Island . . . and who is waiting to bail her out by Weiss again?

There is, however, a glimmer of hope for Ewa, in the form of a dashing Houdini-esque magician named Orlando. Played with relaxed charm and verve by Jeremy Renner, Orlando makes a perfect foil for Phoenix's Bruno. Orlando would traditionally be the hero of this story who gets the girl in the end, but James Gray is not interested in telling a traditional tale, even if he has taken many tropes from older works. Orlando's presence presents its own problems for Ewa, and the brewing conflict among the three central characters affects her most of all.

And Gray certainly lucked out in casting Cotillard; the actress knows how to convey a soliloquy's worth of emotion with a single glance, and Cotillard's mournful, ethereal presence is used in full force here. Her dialogue is minimal, mainly reactionary save for her confessional, and yet she says more in this performance to express her situation than Cate Blanchett did in "Blue Jasmine" could with all of her broad rhapsodizing (no disrespect meant to Cate). Cotillard has played in this era before, and the fact that she has the throwback beauty that would've made her a star even in the silent days makes her presence in this film all the more soulful. (Also,